


Paths of Life

by PhantomArchangel



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Death, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1427896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomArchangel/pseuds/PhantomArchangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are as many ways to bend the elements as there are paths of life. A study of bending through the lives of those who know it best. OC's, pre 100yr  war. One-shots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paths of Life

**Author's Note:**

> A series of one-shots depicting the lives of those who reached new heights of bending.  
> Will go through all four elements and even some avatars, and start during the era of the Avatar before Avatar Yangchen.

There was a crash as one of the stone jars toppled over and shattered into five large pieces on the floor.

The class immediately shut up and turned to look at the source of the noise with anticipation, expecting fun from either the breaker, or the teacher’s punishment.

The elderly nun stopped demonstrating the next kata and straightened up, unrolling each vertebrae in her back like unrolling an old and rarely used sleeping mat. Her eyes managed to catch the black and white ringed tail of a lemur disappearing into one of the younger girl’s shirts. Although she cast what could be considered a stern eye upon the guilty child, it did little to disrupt the bout of giggles that had hit the rest of the class.

“Um…” the girl tried to explain, pushing the squirming lemur out of sight, “It got in on its own…?”

A simple sigh escaped the nun, and, noticing the exuberance of the other children that was unlikely to fade, waved her hand to the archway in the large room, “Why don’t we resume class tommorow? Jishu, please release that poor lemur while you are outside.”

The girl nodded half-heartedly before scrambling to her feet and following the rest of the class outside, lured by the promise of warm sun, a fresh breeze, and games.

Noise coming from outside instead of inside now, Kosho rubbed at her temples with her wrinkled fingers. She was getting too old for this. Although she was not the most accomplished air bender, indeed it had taken her over forty years to master the thirty-sixth level of air bending and get her tattoo, she was still considered a pretty good teacher of the basics. Mostly she ran a class comprised of six to nine year olds who were there to be taught their basic katas and the first five levels.

As she made to go sit down at the short table, thinking that she might read during her extra moments of blissful quiet, she noticed a single child that had not rushed out to play and was instead standing in front of her, awaiting her attention.

“Yes Muho?” she asked, “Is there something that you wish to ask me?”

Muho nodded her head, “Yes. Do you have any scrolls demonstrating the next kata series?”

Kosho frowned and turned to sort through a shelf. Her fingers dragged along the wood off each scroll, squinting to read the characters carved into each one. She had long since memorized everything that was here, and it had been such a long time since one of her students had requested extra reading material. Selecting the correct scroll, she pulled it from the shelf and placed it in Muho’s eagerly waiting hands.

“There you go. Make sure to read it through carefully and go through each stance with care,” Kosho advised.

Bending into a bow that seemed too solemn for a six year old, Muho clasped the scroll to her chest and thanked Kosho before leaving the class room.

Kosho gave the girl a small smile as she watched her walk out. Some kids, some kids understand the concept of learning. Now if only the rest of her class could take notes.

~*~

“Muho!”

Letting out a sigh, the girl in question un-hunched her shoulders and looked her teacher straight in the eye, “Yes?” she asked with utter calmness that was unbecoming of a six year old girl.

Kosho placed her hands on her hips and pursed her lips, casting a look at the scroll Muho had been reading in the back of the class. It was one of the higher level airbending scrolls, one that she shouldn’t have been learning for another three months at least. Behind her, the rest of the class of girls giggled and watched with excitement. “You are not paying attention. Just as the wind may blow away seeds before they grow, the chaos of an undisciplined mind does not absorb new knowledge.”

“But it’s boring,” Muho replied, as if stating a fact that excused her actions. “Why should I pay attention to your lesson when I know it already?”

The old woman crossed her arms stubbornly and proceeded to stare the girl down, “Don’t talk back to your elders!” she snapped.

Muho simply sighed and tucked the scroll into her orange blouse.

“See me after class Muho,” Kosho said with groan.

~*~

“You can’t keep spacing off in class like this,” Kosho began, standing sternly in front of Muho, who was entirely unashamed, “I don’t know how fast you may or may not be learning on your own, but that does not give you an excuse to slack off and not pay attention. One of the most important aspects of Airbending is mental concentration. If you cannot learn that, then it does not matter how many scrolls you read. You need to be able to focus on the tasks in front of you. I know that many children your age have a hard time sitting still, but the majority of your classmates can at least stay on task for most of the class.”

With a frown on her face, Muho replied, “That’s not it. I _can_ focus. I just pay attention to my reading instead.”

Kosho paused, and then asked, “Do you understand the material I lecture on? The material I go over in class?”

The young girl nodded, “Of course. It’s easy.”

After a moment of silence, Kosho concluded, “Try not to do it so often. I don’t want your fellow classmates to follow your example.”

~*~

There was a pattern to the way Muho ignored class, Kosho noted.

During the lessons on Airbending, whether the subject was the basics on theory, the mythology behind it, or the few practical lessons, she would sit up straight and pay perfect attention. When called on to demonstrate forms, she would move from pose to pose with few to no flaws. If asked to correct a fellow students form, she would give smart advice, clearly pointing out her peer’s weaknesses and ways they could be corrected.

But when the class learned about agriculture, trade, geography, sums, history, or anything that wasn’t related to bending, she simply read her own material. She just held no patience for anything else.

~*~

One day out of curiosity, Kosho paid a visit to the young woman who ran the housing for Muho and the other children her age. Because all children in Air Nomad society were raised not by their birth parents, but by the monks or nuns, there were many large houses where all children in a certain age group lived, slept, and ate.

The matron stood and greeted Kosho with politeness, “Kosho, a pleasure,” she smiled and dusted off her robes, “What is the nature of this visit?”

“It is good to see you as well,” Kosho tacked on, remembering her manners, “And I have some questions about one of my students, Muho.”

“Muho?” the matron asked, “Has she done something wrong?”

Kosho shook her head, “No, no. Nothing like that. She is however, quiet and reserved during class and often reads advanced material on her own. I was wondering what her life outside of class is like. Is she the same at home? Does she have any problems with her fellow year-mates? Is there… any bullying that I should be aware of?” Bullying was heavily frowned upon and often punishable, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t occur if some of the girls thought they could get away with it.

“I don’t think so,” the matron said after a moment’s thought, “I would have noticed if she was being picked on. Muho keeps to herself mostly. I suppose she is the same both in your class and here. She reads and she keeps to herself. She stays out late sometimes, I think she likes exploring.”

“Huh,” Kosho scratched her head, “Well then, I suppose she might just be going through a shy period in her life,” she then thought about it and added, “Does… does she have any friends?”

The matron frowned, “Not really.”

~*~

Kosho tried to keep a closer eye on Muho after that.

The matron had been right, or at least, right from what Kosho could see. The girl didn’t socialize, she didn’t play with her year-mates, she didn’t really talk to people when she didn’t have to and it was always in a way that made her seem more like a tutor than a friend.

However, Kosho couldn’t complain. Muho’s work put her solidly at the top of the class.

~*~

Kosho watched as the class, now composed of eight year olds, practiced a basic bending move.

Because most bending only manifested strongly at the age of ten, classes where taught the moves without the bending component behind them. Most Air Nomad children could bend before the age of ten, of course, but that was something the children practiced on their own. By the age of ten, everyone was ready to bend. And when the children were young, bending was typically weak and hard to control.

As a result of this system, the first ten levels of Airbending mastery were simply the physical katas, the moves without the bending. Classes were taught the first five levels before the age of ten, and the other five were learned later in the more advanced classes.

The move that the class was working on right now was simple. A side-step to avoid a punch and then a gentle throw to the ground. The group was broken into pair of two, one to attack, one to practice the defensive move.

Kosho’s wandering eyes passed the predictable groups that were struggling, the ones that were goofing off, the ones that were actually working, and then came to land on Muho.

Her partner, a girl by the name of Tashi was the attacker.

Tashi threw a simple punch, slow and easy to avoid.

In one smooth movement, Muho brought her right arm up and moved her right foot behind her. Her arm deflected the punch, she moved to the side, and brought her left pam down on Tashi’s back, pushing the girl to the ground.

It was perfectly executed, but from the groans and complaints coming from Tashi, it was also stronger than necessary.

In two years, the class would be moving on to the advanced classes. Kosho had a feeling that she might want to move Muho up sooner.

~*~

A nine year old Muho stood in front of her new teacher.

She had graduated a year early, passing the exit exam with ease and quickly was assigned to a group of students two years older than her. This class was smaller, a group of six eleven year olds, her, and one teacher.

The teacher was a young woman in her late twenties names Je-Tsun. Her head of dark hair was halfway shaved to reveal her tattoos. The tattoos denoted mastery of Airbending. After one mastered the thirty-six levels of Airbending, or invented their own unique move, whichever came first, they would be granted their tattoos. Many only gained their tattoos past the age of thirty. Je-Tsun must have had her tattoos for a couple of years, and that gained her respect in Muho’s eyes.

Muho resolved that she would get her tattoos before the age of twenty. That gave her eleven years to work with. She could get there.

~*~

The class she had been placed in was clearly for advanced students, and so Muho found herself no longer at the top of the class. Her peers were students like her, who excelled at bending, but had had two extra years of training. It was irritating, to be outdone. The students she worked with didn’t have her drive, her desire to be _better_ , most Air Nomads didn’t care too much about completion. But that only meant that they were better without even trying, and that irritated Muho even more, like a small itch that she couldn’t yet scratch at.

Class focused less on the boring lessons, and instead more on theory and philosophy, having two hours of meditation each day.

Those classes at least could hold her attention, but she didn’t spend the hours of meditation trying to clear her mind. She instead spent that time concentrating, thinking on her current skill and trying to find ways to improve.

~*~

After seven months of what Muho considered remedial studies, she could finally move on to actual Airbending.

Je-Tsun declared her proficient at the first ten levels of mastery and allowed her to begin working on the next stage.

Levels one through ten were physical kata, no bending, just technique, escalating in difficulty as one progressed up the levels. Levels eleven through twenty were Airbending moves, and like the first levels, increased in difficulty and length. Levels twenty-one through thirty were high level bending techniques and endurance tests, kata that took hours to perform. Thirty-one through thirty-five were bending moves created by past Avatars, renounced for the intense theory and skill it took to successfully complete them. Level thirty-six, the last level, was a spiritual exercise, an unblocking of all the chakras.

Being able to work on level eleven was a godsend to Muho.

Frankly, she loved it.

There was something so freeing, so uplifting about being able to progress with her Airbending. She learned to control her previously random and untamed gusts of wind, to focus her technique for precision and accuracy in a way that she hadn’t been pressed to do before.

And to add to her joy, she was _good_ at it.

~*~

“How are you _doing_ that?” a pigtailed girl asked Muho incredulously, hands on her hips and watching as Muho sent tiny tornados whirring through the air with every flick of her wrist.

An eleven year old Muho looked up from her work and looked at her classmate, two years her senior, and ranked fourth in the class.

Muho flicked her wrist again and sent another small whirl of air towards the girl, who puffed and blew it away, “Doing this, you mean?”

“Yeah!” the girl exclaimed, “You shouldn’t be able to do that! To create spirals, you have to move your body like this,” she then demonstrated a large circular arm movement and brought an air whirl into being.

With a shrug, Muho dismissed her comment, “You’re not thinking right,” she said, “You can shrink down the movement for the same effect, creating a precise move.” She flicked another spiral towards the girl.

“See!” the girl protested, “You’re not moving your arms in a spiral!”

“Yes, I _am_ ,” Muho retorted, “Look,” she slowed down her wrist movement, showing the girl that it was indeed a circular movement, just small and contained to the wrist, “I can use a turn of the wrist to create the spiral, and then my fingers to direct it. It’s smaller, but it takes less movement.”

The girl frowned and tried to emulate the same movement, first slowly and then the quick flick of the wrist. On her third try, she produced a small whirl, less tight, but a whirl none the less.

She grinned and held out her hand to Muho, “I’m Penden.”

Almost reluctantly, Muho shook her hand, “Muho.”

“Nice to meet you, Muho!”

~*~

In the autumn, when Muho was twelve and the rest of her class fourteen, Je-Tsun took the group to the sky bison enclosure.

Most of the bison were still young, only in their first year of life, about the size of the children themselves. They were roaming on the ground and some were flying. Two mothers, large and with fully grown horns lay in the back, one asleep, and the other watching with big black eyes. The air was thick with the animal’s scent, musty and reminiscent of old books.

“Sky bison are intelligent and kind creatures,” Je-Tsun lectured as the class gathered at the entrance to the pavilion, watching the flying babies with wonder and rapt attention, “From them, the first Air Nomads learned the ways of Airbending and echoed their natural tattoos on our bodies,” she gestured to the arrow on her forehead, “Choose your bison wisely. Once you form a bond with a bison, they will be your companion for the rest of your life. That being said, bison are not pets, nor can they be ordered about like common lemur-monkeys. If you do not respect your bison, it will not respect you. Now, you may choose.”

She stepped aside, allowing the class to hurry and push their way into the pavilion.

“Which one do you want, Muho?” Penden asked, her voice full of excitement and glee.

Muho shrugged. The idea of a companion that would remain with her for life like that wasn’t exactly what she wanted. If she picked a bison that disagreed with her or didn’t follow orders well then she would be stuck with it. Maybe she could just not pick one.

A gasp came from Penden, “I want that one!” she exclaimed, rushing over to one of the larger babies that was lying on the ground, as if asleep. “It’s so fluffy!” she cried, latching her arms around the bison, which merely let out a small roar and licked Penden’s face.

“When you have chosen your bison, you must give him or her a name,” Je-Tsun’s calm voice carried through the pavilion.

Looking back at Penden, who was rubbing her new bison’s face like it was a lemur, Muho turned her gaze to the rest of the class.

Most had already found their new companions, or were walking towards a bison with certainty. Je-Tsun was observing the class with her sharp and collected gaze, tossing grain to the lazy looking mother bison lying in front of her.

Muho looked around the pavilion, looking at the bison. If she had to pick one, which one would she pick?

Her gaze fell upon a small baby, one of the tiniest in the litter, about the same size as Muho. It would be unlikely to grow as large as the rest of the sky bison, but Muho had always preferred small and speedy to large and impressive.

Soft footsteps and steady breathing, she walked towards the small bison, not wanting to scare it. When she got close, it looked up at her with its shiny black eyes, and there was something in its gaze that Muho couldn’t name.

She tried to put a kind expression on her face, and held out her hand for the bison to sniff, “Hello.”

It sniffed her hand and nuzzled its head into her palm, the tiny and barely grown horns smooth against Muho’s skin. The bison let out a friendly roar and licked Muho’s face with its large tongue.

When the licking stopped, Muho stood and said, “Hello boy. I guess you’re mine now,” she had to name him too, didn’t she? “… From now on, your name is Eka.”

~*~

In a year, during the time when a sky bison does most of their growing, Eka ate so much food that Muho had taken to almost constantly feeding the bison whenever they were in the same place. At the end of all the growing, Eka was still small for his age, and whenever Penden brought her bison, Gi-Yu, over, Eka was clearly the smaller of the two.

When Muho turned thirteen, she moved out of the communal housing to her own small room.

There were a lot of rooms like hers in the Eastern Temple. They were one room units, large enough for a bed and table, as well as a box for clothing and material possessions. These rooms were located in large houses, with perhaps twenty or thirty rooms to a house and each house sharing bathrooms and eating space.

Her room, like the rest, had one large window in the stone wall that looked out onto the garden where the bison slept. She lived on the fourth floor, and Eka slept at the base of the outer wall, where he could fly up and look in her room whenever he wanted. When he had been smaller, he would fly inside and sleep at the edge of her bed, but that phase had vanished after a month, when he had grown too big to fit through the window.

Now, Eka was probably the size of Muho’s entire room, and that was still considered small for a bison.

~*~

“You’ve progressed remarkably quickly,” Je-Tsun commented, as she and the fourteen year old Muho walked along one of the paths that rimmed the edge of the mountain.

Muho inclined her head respectfully, “Thank you, sifu.”

“But I worry about you,” The older woman added, “Your talent is limited to Airbending. I can see that you are exceptionally bright and determined, but you do not study other areas of pursuit with the same dedication you put into your bending.”

There was a pause before Muho asked, “Is that a bad thing?”

Je-Tsun shook her head, “No. Or perhaps, not necessarily. It depends on what you do with your life. I am merely unsure what pursuit you desire to occupy your days with once you master Airbending.”

Carefully, Muho asked, “But surely that is a long time from now. Can I not wait until I am older to begin thinking about the path my life shall take?”

Avoiding the bait, Je-Tsun cast Muho a look, “My girl, you know as well as I do that you will complete all thirty-six levels before you are old. How is your progress completing the twenty-seventh level going so far? You have been working on it for over a month now.”

Muho grimaced, thinking over the long series of katas that made up the twenty-seventh level. In total, the sequence would take a full hour to go through, and it combined difficult flexibility based moves with complicated Airbending feats. She was still good, but this was truly difficult. “I am… making progress,” she settled on, “I should have it down within another month.”

“You are ambitious,” Je-Tsun commented.

The grimace morphed into a frown, “You do not sound… pleased by that.”

Je-Tsun’s reply was calm, but it cast spirals of doubt throughout Muho, “Does it matter if I am pleased by your personality or not? You are an excellent Airbender, and I am sure that you will be a success in whatever you choose to occupy your days. I am merely concerned for your future.”

“Concerned?” Muho echoed, “Why?”

“You are dear to me,” Je-Tsun admitted, “I have taught you for five years now, and I have the feeling that such a length of time does not extend to the future. Surely you must have realized that if you keep up this progress, you will be out of my class in fewer years than you have already been in it? I worry because despite your talent, you do not fit in well with others. You are in a class with children who are two years your senior. You have no acquaintances outside class, and you speak with few inside class.”

Indignantly, Muho replied, “I am acquainted with Penden.”

Je-Tsun gave Muho a long and concerned look before replying, “Penden diverts authority to you. You two might have a close relationship, but I am not sure I would call it friendship.”

True, Penden was more like a loyal vassal than a friend. Muho only tolerated her because, despite the older girl’s cheerful attitude, she was a fast learner and knew with certainty that Muho was stronger than her. Penden was constantly trying to impress Muho, but appeared to accept that the younger girl would always be above her in their studies. Je-Tsun was right, Muho thought with a frown, but that did not mean that Muho had to be happy that the teacher had seen through her. Most people seemed to assume that Penden and Muho _were_ close friends.

“I am… trying,” Muho decided on, “Is that the only concern you have?”

“I can see that,” Je-Tsun said, before added, “And no. You focus only on Airbending, but our society is a peaceful one,”

She stopped walking and turned to face out from the mountain, looking out onto the sky. The sky was grey and overcast, but small birds still flew in the distance, and large sky bison came in to land on the temple above them. “The Air Nomads formed the four Air Temples so that we could have peaceful seclusion from the conflicts and violence that plague the rest of the four nations. We focus on what is best for our community and we try to see past the pains of this life to gain enlightenment. We are a spiritual society.”

“Not to interrupt, sifu,” Muho spoke up, “But I know all this already. Why are you saying this?”

There was silence, and all that could be heard was the wind blowing through the mountains, the same wind that made the Air Nomads what they were.

“Because,” Je-Tsun said eventually, “I do not think that in your heart you follow this creed. You seem to be more fighter than nun,” she turned to walk away, “Good luck with the twenty-seventh level. And I hope that you figure out what you want to do with your life.”

~*~

A tired and sweaty Muho kneeled before the council of teachers.

There were ten teachers in the Eastern Temple, and all of them were required to promote a bender past the twenty-fifth level. Her own sifu, Je-Tsun sat on the end, with her previous teacher, Kosho sitting somewhere in the middle.

The oldest, an elderly matron named Han-Sen, who also sat on the council of elders, stood, “Well done, young Muho. For your efforts, you have successfully completed the twenty-seventh Airbending level,” she said in her whispery voice, like crackling parchment, “You will be able to test for the twenty-eight level any time after the one month interim period. Good luck.”

~*~

“Why are you so focused on clearing the all the Airbending levels?” Penden asked.

The two were in the garden near Muho’s room. It was a cool day in early autumn, only a few months away from Muho’s fifteenth birthday. Penden was running through the maneuver required to pass the twentieth level, which she had tried and failed at twice now. Muho was currently sitting on Eka’s head, reading through the task that would be required for the thirtieth level. With the passing of the thirtieth level, she would be cleared for the next section, which meant that she would be placed in an apprenticeship until she passed the last six levels or until she or her teacher decided to end their teaching.

The thirtieth level required her to learn how to fly with one of the Nomad’s gliders. It was difficult to teach, and Je-Tsun had given her cryptic advice, as if trying to see how far Muho could go on such little help.

“I wish to be a master before I turn twenty,” Muho informed her.

Penden frowned in confusion, “What for?”

Muho shrugged, “Because I want to. I want to be as good as I can as fast as I can. You should put more effort into your progress as well, or you shall gain your tattoos at the age of thirty with the rest of the class.”

She whipped the sweat off her brow and began to run through the moves again. Penden knew better than to ask Muho what was wrong with that by now. Muho accepted nothing less than the best, and applied this policy to her own life with strict discipline. Penden, as an extension, was also expected to apply this same harshness to her own life.

“And you’re doing the kick wrong,” Muho added.

Penden groaned and consulted her notes again.

~*~

Six months later found Muho once again in front of the council of teachers, this time, having just finished a spectacular flight around the temple with Je-Tsun’s glider.

Han-Sen applauded Muho and presented her with her own staff, a new thing that gleamed and smelled of fresh carved wood, “For your efforts passing the thirtieth level, we present you with your own glider. May you use it well. For the next five levels, you will be supervised and passed by a teacher in a one on one apprenticeship.”

Muho bowed and accepted the glider.

She planned to ask Kosho, her old beginner instructor for the apprenticeship. Kosho was not the smartest teacher, but she was naïve, and Muho knew that if Kosho was her teacher, she could easily be left to her own devices for much of the time. She had begun to work on her own bending ideas, and extra time would be appreciated. Kosho would be the sort of teacher that gave her precise instructions and then checked in every so often. Muho didn’t need anyone meddling with her work or her studies, and Kosho was just the sort of person for that. Kosho was also very blunt, and Muho had realized that she didn’t like it when Je-Tsun had told her that she was not truly friends with Penden. An overly perceptive teacher would not serve her well.

“Now, normally you would be given a one month grace period to find your own teacher,” Han-Sen continued, and Muho’s stomach dropped, “But Je-Tsun has already requested that you continue your studies as her apprentice.”

At the end of the line, Je-Tsun nodded her head to Muho and there was that perceptive look in her eyes again.

Muho bowed deeply to Han-Sen, and then turned to bow to Je-Tsun, “I would be honored to accept your proposal.”

Mentally, she cursed.

~*~

Je-Tsun was everything that Muho had not wanted as a teacher.

She was too interfering, too _aware_ of what Muho was doing all the time. Often, Muho felt as though she would be far happier if she could simply learn out of scrolls again, instead of from Je-Tsun.

“You are putting too much force behind that move,” Je-Tsun scolded as Muho practiced, “That would have been a killing blow. Blunt your wind when you strike.”

Muho rolled her eyes.

~*~

A storm came in one day, unexpectedly. Muho, who had been flying on her glider around the mountains that surrounded the temple, was almost caught by the rain and had to land in a small mountain cave.

She propped her staff next to her against the wall and huddled in on herself to conserve body heat. Living at high altitudes meant that the cold and the damp could cause hypothermia far more easily than it could off the temple. With every breath that poured out, she could see the steam from her breath fill the small space.

A small lemur chirped from the entrance and scuttled into the cave to perch just on the outside ledge. Muho locked her gaze with the lemur and watched the tiny creature preen its wings.

Every breath of hers charged the air and was filled with her own energy, the same as when she would bend.

But breathing was not the same as bending. Breath was life, and without breath, without air to breath, a body would die. The lungs were a center of energy in the body, not one of the seven chakras, but still a pool where benders could charge energy. That was why so many Firebenders claimed that their fire came from the breath.

Airbending didn’t come from the breath in the same way, although there were many moves that involved creating gusts of wind from the mouth or lips.

She twirled her wrist and felt her own wind fill up the cave. It was like a pool of her own energy. She could even feel it inside the lemur’s lungs.

As Muho felt this pool of energy, a small idea blossomed in her mind.

Extending her arm, palm open and limbs loose, towards the lemur, she felt out that air in its lungs. There it was, just like any other air around her.

With a sharp movement, Muho close her fist and pulled her arm up, dragging the air out of the lemur’s lungs.

It tried to chirp and when that failed, it writhed on the rocks, clawing at its throat and at invisible enemies.

For a few minutes, it continued like that, squirming and thrashing all over the place.

Then it went still, and Muho could feel the life leave its body. She released her fist and let the air flow naturally.

The lemur didn’t stir.

She had just killed a creature, and for some reason, Muho didn’t feel any remorse. She felt… strong. Powerful.

She wanted to do it again.

~*~

It took two years for Muho to move through all five levels. She felt like she was dragging her feet through a swamp, having to swim against the current. Her old respect and admiration for Je-Tsun had turned to bitter dislike and almost hatred for the woman. Her teacher had her do pointless tasks, meditate and contemplate the meaning of things far too often. It slowed her down. One time, Je-Tsun had wasted a whole week teaching Muho about the best way to make jams.

Somewhere, Muho knew that Je-Tsun honestly was concerned about Muho and wanted to help her, but it was irritating. Je-Tsun’s idea of what was best for Muho was wrong. She wanted Muho to be something that the girl simply wasn’t.

Between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, Muho had grown.

She was no longer a small child, but now a young woman. Her long dark hair was always tied in a low ponytail, and she had elegant features with pale eyes and skin. She still was thin, a wisp of a figure here and there, but with long limbs and a lean body.

On the contrary, Penden, who was almost twenty, was rounder, with wide cheeks and a grinning complexion. Even the pigtails were still there.

The two were now as different on the outside as they were on the inside, and it was easy for Muho to see why Je-Tsun had immediately doubted their friendship. They still weren’t really friends, and Muho had to push Penden away whenever the girl got to close to either Muho or Eka. Muho had a close relationship with her bison, but she was a selfish creature and wanted to keep her companion to herself.

At the moment, Muho had a month to go before she would be put through the thirty-sixth test. Upon completion, she would be considered an Airbender master and would be granted her tattoos.

The thirty-sixth test was the hardest, and could take days. It was an unblocking of all seven chakras. Je-Tsun had been putting Muho through extra hours of meditation to prepare for the test.

~*~

Muho sat at the top of the waterfall, her legs crossed and her body perched on a large and smooth rock that bisected the falls.

Water rushed around her but did not touch her and the small droplets made dark wet splotches on her saffron trousers. She folded her hands in the correct position and closed her eyes.

~*~

The first chakra was the Earth Chakra. Dealing with survival and blocked by fear.

That was easy. What was there to be afraid of? Death, perhaps, but that was eventual and unavoidable. Within the first hour, Muho could feel a rush of energy through the base of her spine.

~*~

Every few hours, Muho would open her eyes and change the position of her hands, slowly making her way through the portions of her body that housed each chakra.

~*~

The first four were easy. She felt no fear, held no deep guilt, felt no shame for any of her actions, and had not experienced grief.

~*~

The fifth, was not easy.

The Sound Chakra. Dealing truth and blocked by lies. Located in the throat.

What was the greatest lie Muho had told herself?

In her vision, she saw herself at her feet, like a reflection in a pond. When Muho breathed in, the reflection rippled and the image distorted.

The her in the water, the reflection of herself wasn’t any different at first glance. But when Muho looked again, the reflection was grinning. Really grinning, unlike Muho’s multitude of fake smiles and false sweet looks. And she was bloody.

Something dripped into the water from Muho’s fingers and she brought her hand up to examine it.

Her hand was painted red, dripping with blood. Gory. She let her hand fall and looked back at the reflection of herself.

Where her reflection had once been, there was instead the dead body of a lemur, the same lemur that she had killed before.

Her gut twisted. Not in guilt or disgust, but in something different. Hot and sweet. Pleasure. She remembered how it had felt to kill that lemur, to squeeze the life out of its body and she _reveled_ in how it had felt, in the heat that flowed through her at the thought of killing something again.

This was her lie.

But what exactly was the form it took? She didn’t know, and she tried to walk around the lemur, to move somewhere else, to try and see what the lie exactly was, but she couldn’t. Another push to move and she could feel something in her throat close off.

She had blocked her chakra.

Her grey eyes snapped open, removing her from the world of visions and back to reality.

A curse fell from her lips and she could feel something hot and wet well up in her eyes.

Muho was seventeen.

And for the first time in her life, she had failed to complete a level.

~*~

“It’s alright,” Je-Tsun said calmly, placing a hand on Muho’s shoulder as they walked to face the council of elders, the ones who would pass or fail Muho for her final level. “Many do not complete this level for many years. You still have a lot of time ahead of you to finish unblocking all your chakras.”

Muho shrugged off the hand and bowed before the council.

It was still Han-Sen who addressed her this time, “Have you finished your meditation, Muho?”

With a solemn nod, Muho answered, “I have.”

“And?” Han-Sen pressed, “Did you open all seven chakras?”

“No,” Muho said quietly, ashamed by her failure and feeling the red hot burn of it.

Han-Sen sighed, “Well, it is unusual to have one as young as you attempt this anyways,” she said in what must have been a reassuring voice, “In a few months, perhaps, you can make the attempt again. This is not the end of your progress, you must know that, you are a brilliant and very talented bender, and I am sure that given a few more years, you will be able to gain your tattoo.”

Muho clenched her fists. She didn’t _want_ a few more years. She couldn’t take that long. She glanced to the side at Je-Tsun. Her teacher looked… pleased by this. _Pleased._

For the first time, anger flared up in Muho.

“Actually, I would like to fulfill the other requirement,” she spoke up, loud and determined and oh-so furious.

Han-Sen looked derailed for a moment before asking, “You mean, you have developed an original Airbending technique? My dear, that has not been done for many decades, please do not let shame force you to do something you are not ready for.”

Muho shook her head, “No. I’m ready. I have a new technique.”

“If you’re sure…” Han-Sen trailed off.

With a bow, Muho turned and walked towards a nearby tree where a lemur was munching at lychee nuts. Casting a glare towards the surprised Je-Tsun, she reached towards the creature. She picked up the lemur, who screeched in protest before being silenced by a handful of lychee nuts that Muho held out.

She placed another pile of nuts on the stone floor and let go of the lemur, who quickly pounced upon the pile.

Muho took a step back and breathed in deeply.

Breathe in. Breathe out. She could feel the swirling energies, little whirls that floated around the reach of her senses. And she could feel the energy dip into the lemur’s lungs and she knew that she could do it again.

She settled into a low stance, her right foot and arm extended.

Breathe in.

In a smooth motion, she snapped her feet together, drawing herself up, her closed fist and arm following.

Gasps echoed from the council as the lemur began to thrash. Like before, it struggled for a few moments before going limp. Slowly, Muho let the creature and her hand fall, feeling… a _rush_ of power and pleasure from the death.

Coming down from her high, she turned to look at the council.

They were all shocked. Some were horrified. Je-Tsun looked… disappointed as well as revolted.

Han-Sen slowly collapsed back into her seat, and said, shakily, “… Congratulations.”

Muho bowed and left.

~*~

After a short visit to the nun who applied the tattoos onto Muho’s body, she returned to the garden to lean against Eka.

Her whole body felt sore from the tattooing, and she had to resist the urge to touch her forehead where her new blue arrow rested. “Look Eka,” she said softly, “We match.”

“Muho!”

She looked up to see an enthusiastic Penden running towards her, “Hello…” she said with a sigh before Penden skidded to a stop in front of her.

“Wow!” Penden exclaimed, “You did it! I knew you would! There’s no way that you couldn’t pass! So tell me, tell me! How was unblocking your chakras? Someone told me that was painful, but there’s no way that’s true.”

Muho hesitated, “I didn’t. I didn’t unblock my chakras. I demonstrated a new technique instead.”

Penden’s jaw dropped, “No _way_. Can you show me?”

“No,” Muho snapped, before sighing, “And don’t ask me again.”

~*~

Two days later, Muho was summoned to appear before the council. Je-Tsun was there as well, hovering at the edge of the room and looking apprehensive.

She kneeled respectfully, “To what do I owe this honor?”

Han-Sen stood and turned a sharp voice towards Muho, “While you fulfilled all thirty-six levels of Airbending and are now considered a master, and that will not change, we have had to come to a decision about the technique you created. It might have been… impressive. And the theory is interesting. However, that type of vicious attack goes against every principle we hold true. As a result, this technique is forbidden and you are not allowed to perform it ever again.”

She wouldn’t be allowed to kill again?

But… she wanted to feel that pleasure, that desire to crush again. She couldn’t obey that rule, she just couldn’t. She knew that she would have to kill again.

“I… see,” she said calmly.

She knew why she had blocked her fifth chakra. This was the lie. She had thought, all this time, that she could actually live as an Air Nomad. She had thought that she wasn’t a killer at heart. She had tried to pretend that she was a nun. She wasn’t.

~*~

Muho grabbed her small wicker box of belongings and a sleeping roll and tied it all down to Eka’s saddle. She changed into her most sturdy clothes and tied her darkest cloak around her shoulders. After a moment of deliberation, she grabbed her staff from where it lay against her wall. She liked that staff too much to leave it behind.

And in the middle of the night, she simply left.

~*~

Muho didn’t know where she was going, but she knew that whatever her future held, she wouldn’t find it in any of the Air Temples.

She instead directed Eka towards the tall mountain range that spread across the south of the Earth Kingodm. Perhaps she could find a path in the large and sprawling continent, a place much larger than all the air temples combined.

~*~

“Muho dear, would you set the table please?” the kind Ling asked, her motherly face smiling at Muho as she stirred the pot.

“Sure,” Muho replied with a nod and began to pull out bowls.

Having landed in a small but busy trading town, Muho had no idea what to do or where to go, and fortunately, Ling and her husband Duyi had taken her in without a second thought. Kind people. In the Air Temples, no one was homeless. Elders and young children lived off the community and everyone shared resources. The Earth Kingdom was not like that. Those that did not or could not work starved or were forced to live off the charity of others.

This stay in the small grocer’s home could not last more than a month, Muho promised herself. She had to limit the time she stayed in one place until she could figure out what to do.

But while she was here, at least the couple was… nice.

~*~

Three weeks into her stay, Muho blew it.

She and Ling were out shopping through the market place while Duyi worked in the shop. It was a pleasant day, warm out and with a small breeze that lifted Muho’s spirits immensely. The vendors called out their wares with zeal, but with a familiarity that came from the town’s overall cheer and pleasant aura.

There was a method to Ling’s shopping. The woman would bustle from table to table, examining everything and only when she decided that whatever she was examining was the best she could find in the market would she buy it. Then she would spend a long amount of time haggling the owner down to the lowest price she could. At the first stall she bought five melons for the set price of two. At the second store she pretend to act like she was disinterested until the owner promised her a second one free, at which point she snapped the money on the counter like no one’s business.

It was an interesting task for Muho to watch.

She found herself subconsciously comparing everything she saw to her life at the Eastern Air Temple. There, the Air Nomads had certain groups of trades that would trek to the base of the mountain three times a year. Because these groups never changed, the prices never changed either and most trading was uneventful.

This was different, it was like a constant war between Ling and the shop keepers.

Muho bent to look at a strange pottery piece when it happened.

Ling cried out with a shout for “My purse!”

The thin thief darted through the crowd, the stolen object tight in his grasp.

Bursting into action, Muho ran after him, her long legs built for speed. As she chased, she slashed her arms through the air, sending two pressurized sharp bursts of wind towards the thief.

The first burst slashed through his cloak and sent him collapsing to the ground to avoid the second burst.

Muho skidded to a stop and stepped around the collapsed thief.

She snatched the air from his lungs and watched him choke while she picked up Ling’s purse that he had quickly discarded once he had started to grasp at his neck. Muho looked through the purse to make sure that he hadn’t pulled anything from it.

After a minute of silence, she let the body fall.

She looked around the once-busy market.

It was dead silent.

Just like the council of elders. Just like the Air Nomads. Shock. Surprise. Disgust. Fear. Muho didn’t understand it, she didn’t understand why the people moved away from her as she walked back towards a stock-still Ling. Why were they afraid? She wasn’t going to kill _them_ , if she had wanted to they would be choking on the ground already. Did they fear her because they didn’t know what she had done? But she was an Airbender, they could see the arrow on her forehead.

She held out the purse to Jing.

The woman’s eyes were wide, her hands clutched to her chest and her body shaking. “… Just… just take it!” she cried, stepped backwards, away from Muho.

Muho frowned, “I don’t want it.”

She dropped the purse on the ground and walked away.

~*~

After the previous fiasco, Muho spent the next few days in one of the nearby forests.

What she needed to eat she could kill or gather. That was another change, she didn’t have to adhere to vegetarianism, instead, she could simply eat whatever was around. It was easier that way, she thought. Vegetarian options were not always available on the menu.

Eka roared with annoyance at the smoke from Muho’s tiny fire.

“Sorry Eka,” she said calmly, holding her hands out for warmth.

~*~

A full week passed of just traveling through small towns.

She didn’t stop anywhere long enough to know people, just long enough to pick up supplies and to make sure she wasn’t going backwards.

~*~

Three weeks later and Muho was beginning to feel an itch.

She had been killing small animals in the forests and even made a point not to waste her money on meat, but there was something different. Killing that thief had felt _so_ much better than killing animals. There was something different about people, she decided. She wanted to try it again.

The next town she came to was larger and more sprawling.

During the night, she dressed in dark colors, snuck into the cells that the local police used, and killed both men locked inside. By the morning, she was gone. And the itch was muted.

~*~

A month passed and she entered the huge city of Gaoling.

This place was different.

With stolen money she rented a small room from an old man. She was well aware that she was living in the ‘bad part’ of town, but that was what was so great about this city. There were homeless people and thieves and criminals and all sorts of scum roaming the nasty parts of the city, and the rich that lived in the nice parts didn’t care if some people never made it back to wherever the slept at night. The wealth gap was huge in Gaoling, and it showed.

But that was good news for Muho.

It meant that whenever she wanted to kill, she could, and no one would care so long as she was careful. If necessary, she could stay here for a year or more.

She found a nice series of caves in the nearby mountains and set Eka up with a nice area to live in. Every other day, she would fly out to the cave and feed Eka what he could not find for himself. And during the rest of her time, she looked for work.

~*~

Within a couple of days, she was working as a waitress in a small and seedy bar.

She had taken to covering up her tattoos. Long sleeved shirts covered the ones on her hands and arms and a strip of black cloth covered the arrow on her forehead. After the first few days of job hunting, she realized that Air Nomads were not common, and no one in the city expected the monks or nuns to take jobs. Revealing who she was simply brought on rounds of questions that she wanted to avoid.

The bar wasn’t exactly fun, but if a customer got a bit too hands on with Muho, her boss had given her fine permission to bloody the offending asshole up a bit.

She hadn’t thought that such occurrences were likely to happen, but within the first three months, she had had drunken men try to cop a feel more times than she could count. Her eighteenth birthday had left her firmly out of puberty and reasonably attractive. While her face was nothing special, she had a very lithe body from the training that she still put herself through.

Her boss kept expecting her to get offended and leave during the first month, but Muho simply shrugged it off. It didn’t bother her, and this place was perfect.

~*~

Four months into her stay and she began to hear rumors of people disappearing or suddenly dropping dead.

After Muho had stabbed one woman to death instead of simply strangling her, she had begun to realize that she quite liked it when she could get her victims to shed blood. Her methods had gotten more and more creative, and as a result, she had to learn how to cover her tracks. It wasn’t too hard. No one would ever suspect her, really.

~*~

Another month passed and then things shifted again.

One evening, during the busy hours of the bar, when the men were at their most drunk and loud, a stranger who Muho had never seen in the city before sat down at the bar.

He didn’t sit at one of the tables, instead he sat down right in front of Muho. This man was dressed in dark clothing, had a thick head of dark hair and a crooked nose, and he radiated certainty and confidence in a way that made Muho wary. He nodded to her politely then rested his chin on his hands to better stare at her with brilliant green eyes.

Muho walked up to him and asked with the tone she tended to use when dealing with customers, “Hey there, can I get you something?”

“Yes, actually,” he said without any hints of drunkenness, “Are you the same person who is responsible for all the murders around here?”

Ice trickled through her veins, and her hands twitched in the folds of her skirts. She couldn’t kill him like this, she had to know why he thought that, she had to know how he had found her out. If for no reason other than to improve her skills. Instead, she morphed her expression into one of perfect surprise, “What makes you ask me that? Why would I be killing people?”

The man shrugged and reached for a glass that had been left at the counter, still mostly full, “Don’t know. I don’t care why you kill people really, that’s not my business. But you’re the same person that left a body in Setsu village seven months ago, aren’t you? And then two more bodies in Boshu city? An… Airbender, yes? I know I’m right, but I’d like to know how you’re doing it.”

In a flash, Muho pulled a knife out from her pocket and pinned the man’s hand to the table.

Red blood leaked out onto the wooden counter from the puncture on his palm as she glared at him, “How did you know?”

He raised an eyebrow at her, “Ow,” he commented dryly, “And I knew because the technique was the same. Every corpse was suffocated, but there weren’t any finger marks or anything like that. The police in Boshu filed a report to the authorities here. I’m merely following the trail,” he glanced up at her with a grin, “And let me say, _you_ are _way_ better looking than the description I got from that couple in Setsu. You’re hiding that… funky arrow tattoo with that headband, right? _Totally_ makes you look hot. Just saying.”

“So you’re police?” Muho said, her heart pounding and her breathing increasing in pace. She was under stress and pressure, and she had no idea what was going to happen to her and what she would have to do to get out of this, and she _loved_ it. The adrenaline alone was enough to give her a high like she had just crushed the throat of a man.

“Nope,” he replied, grin still present, “I’ve nothing to do with the police, I just know how to read their messages. Really, messenger hawks are unreliable.”

Muho frowned, her hand still wrapped tight around the knife, “So then who are you?”

His green eyes sparkled, “Call me Han. I work for… an interested party,” he pointed to the knife sticking out of his right hand, “Are you going to keep that there all day?”

Yanking the knife from the table, Muho produced a cloth from her apron. She wiped the blood off the blade with practiced ease and tucked it back in her skirt pocket. “Is Han your real name?”

“Course not,” Han replied, “But that’s what people call me. Might as well be my real name. Do I get the same pleasure in return?”

Muho glared at him, “I’m not giving you my name, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Too bad,” he said with false sadness, “It’s Muho, isn’t it? I was hoping you’d be nicer to me.”

She cast him an incredulous look, “Nice? You’ve accused me of murder. What’s stopping you from having me thrown in jail or killed?”

He looked surprised, “Uh… everything? First and foremost, why on earth would I want to? You in jail or killed doesn’t help me. And besides, you’d probably try and kill me if you thought I would kill you. From what I can see, you kill for fun, or because you have to, and I don’t care why. But what I do know is that you don’t hesitate to kill. You haven’t tried to do me in yet because you’re too curious to kill me,” he cast another prize-winning grin at her, “You’re tempted to find out what I have to offer you.”

Damn him for being corrected again. “Fine,” she gritted out, “Explain whatever it is you have to offer me.”

“My boss has a proposition for you,” Han said calmly, “You kill who he tells you to kill and you don’t ask questions. You get to kill however many people you want and get paid for it. And as long as you’re not stupid, the boss will keep you generally safe from the local police or the Earth Kingdom army. You get a place to live and you get whatever weapons or gear you want so long as you can justify buying them. And if you’ve got any debts or messy pasts that are clinging onto you, the boss can help you clear them.”

Muho paused to think through his words, “You want me to be a hit man?”

Han shrugged, “Pretty much, yeah. I don’t see you having a problem with that.”

“Oh?” she asked with a dark eyebrow raised in a perfect arch, “And why not?”

“You’re killing perfectly fine without reason here,” he explained, “Working for someone else is the same, only more guided. And here’s what I think. I think you’re like me. People like us, we don’t kill because other’s force us to. We kill because it’s fun. You probably started out with animals, yeah? Creatures that you knew you could get away with? But then people started looking at you funny and you realized that you were different and then you found that the more human the kill, the better it feels. People like us kill to get that hot pleasure in our guts when we end a life. You’re going to come work with me because it’s an easy way to get your fix.”

Muho’s eyes widened, his words echoing through her head, “How did you know that?”

“Heh… knew I was right,” he muttered to himself, and then addressed Muho with a confident smile on his face, “I told you. I know because I’m the same as you, and I know how to read the signs. You don’t kill for vengeance, for justice. Your victims are people that you knew you could do in and get away with. You don’t care who you kill, so long as you get to be the last to watch the life leave their eyes and their blood stain your hands.”

There was a lull between them, and the cheers and rowdy noise in the background of the bar seemed to fade, “So… you work for this boss as well?” Muho finally asked.

“Yup,” Han replied, “If you accept – which you totally will – we’ll probably end up working together.”

Muho leaned against the back of the bar, the contours of her spine pressing against the wall of glass bottles. “Very well. Give me time to think this over.”

Han stood and pushed back his chair, “Of course. I’ll be staying in the inn two streets over. You have a full day to think about it and give me your decision.”

With that said, he strode confidently out of the bar, tucking his injured hand into the pocket of his pants without so much as a wince.

~*~

In the morning, Muho, her meager belongings packing away in Eka’s saddle and her staff held at her side, marched up to the door of Han’s room and knocked.

There was no other choice really.

His offer had her baited and caught without even trying.

~*~

Han groaned and threw his arm over his eyes, “This is _really_ weirding me out.”

From her perch on Eka’s head, Muho had to glance over her shoulder to shoot him a look, “Your idea was to walk to Ba Sing Se,” she gestured to Eka, who was currently soaring high in the sky with the two riding on his back, “You must admit, this is faster than walking.”

“My idea _wasn’t_ to walk there,” Han protested, “I was thinking that we could hire a couple of ostrich-horses, skirt around the edge of the Si Wong Desert and then take the ferry from Full Moon Bay. It would be a month, tops.”

“Is that how you got out here?” Muho asked him.

He shook his head, “Nah. I was already in the Southern Mountains for a mission from the boss when I got the message to find you.”

“When you say ‘mission from the boss’ do you mean…?” she trailed off.

“Was I killing someone?” Han finished, “Yup. The way our business works isn’t personal you know. Sometimes I get sent out to kill someone that the boss personally hates or wants dead, but it’s not usually like that. The boss is a contactor. People get in touch with him when they want someone dead and the boss sends us out to do the job. Client pays boss, boss gives us share, we get paid. There’s a lot of traveling too. I’ve been to almost every major city in the Earth Kingdom and a few in the Fire Nation as well.”

Admittedly, that did sound quite nice. Despite remaining in temples for most of their lives, there was a reason that the Air Nomads were so closely in touch with the wind. Her people had begun as a migratory race, traveling on land and through the sky with their bison. Now, most Air Nomads stayed in their temples, or traveled from temple to temple, but most didn’t travel to other countries. The exceptions of course, were the councils, which would occasionally be asked to attend diplomatic meetings with the other nations.

“So,” Muho pressed, “What is your usual method of travel?”

“Eel-hound,” Han said with a grin, “Nothing faster on land or water.”

One hand fell from the reigns to rub her bison’s head fondly, “My Eka is faster than any eel-hound in the sky,” Muho said with a thin smile.

~*~

Ba Sing Se was an enormous city.

There were, as Han explained to her, two walls that cut the city in half. There was the inner ring, where rich nobles lived, as well as those that ran high end stores and restaurants. The inner city was also home to all diplomats, councilors to the king, and those that had bribed their way up the social caste. In the center of the inner city was the palace that housed the Earth King. The outer ring was the city’s slums. Filled with pickpockets and thieves and people that had moved from all over the Earth Kingdom to try and make a better life for themselves in the city. Most of the merchants could only do trade in the outer ring, and most shopkeepers began there by setting up rickety stalls and work their way up.

The outer ring was also busier, more populated, and apparently a better place to do business. Gangs and drug cartels ran rampant through the outer ring, most not even bothering to attempt to expand their less than legal business to the inner ring.

“So does this boss live in the outer ring?” Muho asked. She had been forced to land Eka outside the city walls, but promised her bison that she would find him a place to stay inside the city once she knew what her situation would be like.

Han shook his head, and smirked at her, “Nope. He lives in the inner ring. Brilliant, isn’t it? No one suspects that he ever does anything wrong. Meanwhile, he’s got people that work for him in the outer ring, as well as a couple outposts scattered throughout the Earth Kingdom. Only people that he actually knows ever talk to him. The rest have to route their business through one of the boss’s agents.”

~*~

It took them two train rides to get to where they would meet the boss. One got them inside the outer wall, and the other got them to the side of the outer ring where Han would take her to see the boss. They weren’t going to his residence in the inner ring, for obvious reasons according to Han. Instead they would go to the business front he had set up in the Western section of the outer ring.

Muho was entirely unfamiliar with a city so large, and found herself walking closer and closer to Han, who navigated the thin alleys and twisting streets with familiar ease. She kept looking up, too. The buildings here were built high, like they were trying to compete with the height of the wall, and each structure seemed to be at minimum five stories high. People kept calling out to her and Han on the busier streets. Vendors and people carrying baskets on their heads would shout out to them promising goods and services for payment.

Everything here was so dirt as well. The Air Temples were kept clean and neat, and even the bison enclosures were regularly tided- not like bison were very dirty animals to begin with. But here the streets were positively _filthy_. Muho was not sure if she was looking forward to the rain season or not.

Han eventually led her to a small store front with what looked like a bunch of apartments on top. The store had a dirty crimson curtain hanging over the entrance instead of a door, and there were no windows inside the shop. A wooden sign about the entrance proclaimed the store to be Zhu’s Poppy.

Muho frowned as Han came to a stop in front of the tiny store. “Zhu’s Poppy?” she asked with scorn.

“Zhu, for red or crimson,” Han explained with a grin, “So, blood basically. Poppies signify eternal sleep, or oblivion,” he gestured inside, “It’s a flower shop.”

Stepping inside, Muho found that he hadn’t been lying.

There were buckets full of flowers filling the small room. Large round wooden barrels containing bunches of sunflowers, plum blossoms, jasmine, flowers that Muho had never seen growing on the harsh rocks of the Air Temple mountains. The blossoms filled the tiny store with a sweet flowery aroma that seemed to permeate every corner of the place. At the back of the shop, there was a wooden door leading behind the store and a counter top. Behind the counter, a smiling young girl beamed at them.

“Hey Chen,” Han greeted the girl with a small wave, striding confidently across the shop to the back door.

The girl, Chen huffed and looked from him to Muho. Upon a second look, Muho found that Chen was a remarkably pretty girl, with thick long hair and a delicate face. “Han. Boss has been waiting for you for an hour now. Better have a damn good reason for making him wait,” she said with a crass voice that didn’t match her innocent features.

Han jabbed his thumb towards Muho, “Got a new one. Boss is gonna like her,” he said, grinning at Muho, “Come on, you heard the girl. Don’t wanna keep the boss waiting.”

Muho hurried to follow him through the back door, nodding respectfully to Chen as she passed.

On her way out, Muho’s eye caught sight of the thin daggers tucked carefully into the back of Chen’s apron. “Who’s she?” she asked Han as they entered a hallway that led further away from the street.

“Chen,” Han told her redundantly, “She works for the boss too. Manages this front for the Western half of the outer ring. Chen isn’t a hit man like me or you, but she’s wicked fast and the boss has found that a pretty face can clear up potential conflicts before they begin.”

“Smart,” Muho admitted.

Han stopped outside of a small nondescript door and knocked three times on the hard wood.

After a moment, the door was yanked open from the inside, and Han and Muho were staring at a tall and muscular looking man with tanned skin and a shaven head. He looked over the two of them with deep green eyes and a suspicious gaze. With a nod to Han, he turned a glare to Muho, “Han. Who’s the bitch?”

“Newbie,” Han replied, although Muho found the term offensive, “Boss is expecting her.”

The tall man looked over his shoulder inside the room for confirmation.

“She’s expected,” a calm voice said from inside the room.

Han gave the tall man a wink, and the man simply stepped to the side, allowing Han to pull Muho inside the room before the man shut the door behind them and stood in front of the closed door radiating menace.

The room wasn’t large or extravagant, just a simple back room, a table with three chairs and a single plush seat upon which a man sat. The man, who Muho assumed was the boos, was plump, but in a barrel-chested sort of way. He was dressed in luxurious but practical green silks and had tied back brown hair and light green eyes. A pot of tea sat on the table and the man was taking a sip from a small china cup.

Han bowed to the man before sitting on one of the wooden chair and Muho hastened to follow his example.

The boss looked up from his cup of tea to survey Muho with a cool gaze, “Hello. You must be the Airbender, Muho, yes? I am Kang. I am sure that Han has told you about the business I run and the sort of deal I am willing to offer you.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Muho replied, surveying the man before her. He didn’t look like a fighter, but there must be a reason that he could successfully run a hit business like he did. Perhaps he had been a fighter in his youth, or maybe he was a skilled Earthbender. Bending, although not an all-powerful art, could add skill to those who would usually be too old to fight. Indeed, some of the strongest benders were the oldest because their skill did not decrease as they passed the prime of their lives.

“I’ve read over what little we have on you,” Kang said, and she got the distinct impression that he was paying her a compliment, “Very impressive. Before we agree to anything, I want to see how you do it. How you kill, I mean. But business first. Tell me everything that Han told you about the offer I extended.”

Muho glanced towards Han briefly before replying, “You tell me who to kill and I kill them. I don’t ask questions. I get paid. If I’ve got any debts you clear them. You help me stay out of the way of the army and you pay for tools that I would need.”

Pouring himself another cup of tea, Kang nodded, “That’s pretty much it yes. For the first six months, you would need to remain on premises, but that just means that you get a free apartment above this shop until you have enough money to buy your own place,” he took a long sip of tea before mulling over his next words, “As for avoiding the army… to an extent that’s true. The bodies you leave behind I will deal with, but if you’re stupid and get caught I’m more likely to cut my losses and throw you to the army’s nonexistent mercy.”

She raised an eyebrow, surprised by how up front he was about this, “You’re quite honest.”

“I always am,” he replied simply, “It makes for good business, I find.”

“Is there anything I should know then?” Muho pressed.

He set the tea cup down on the table without a sound, “Yes, I’m getting there. I expect you not to be stupid enough to let yourself be caught at any rate. And if you do get caught and end up spilling whatever secrets you learn to pay for your life… then I’ll send in someone to kill you. In general however, I won’t tell you much. Unless the circumstances force it, you won’t know who requested the kill or why, and I do not expect you to ask. Business runs smoothly when I am the only one who knows all my secrets.”

Muho shook her head, “That won’t be a problem. I am no fool, and I believe that once my loyalty is paid for I will not give it up, in the unlikely event that I am captured alive. And I don’t care who I kill. Or why. That doesn’t matter to me.”

Kang lifted his appraising gaze to her eyes, “You are like Han, yes? A psychopath?”

The word was foreign to her, “I am like Han, but I do not know that word.”

He shrugged and let the matter drop, “It does not matter, I do not care what _motivates_ you to kill, only how good you are at doing it. Back to business. I’ll pay for weapons and gear if I deem them necessary. Apart from that, you’ll have to pay for everything else you want. If you have requests for a rare item that falls under what I would cover, you shall send the request through Chen, even when you no longer live on site. As for debts… Once you work for me, I’ll give you a blank slate, so to say. The investigation into the bodies you let behind in Gaoling and Boshu will be dropped, subtly of course. Hmm… you’re an Air Nomad, so I won’t have to clear any record of you, will I? You’ll be given new identification papers for Ba Sing Se as well. You don’t happen to have a troubled past do you? No siblings or enemies out to get revenge on you?”

It was a strange question, but Muho shook her head anyways, “No. All Air Nomads are raised by the nuns or monks, we don’t have siblings. And our society is a peaceful one, no one really cares about vengeance. If someone disliked me when I lived there, they would have dropped the matter once I left.”

“Good, good,” Kang commented, “I am glad to hear that. Han here,” he gestured to the other man who suddenly looked a little bit sheepish, “had an older brother out for his blood. Terribly messy to deal with, always showing up in places he shouldn’t have been to look for Han.”

Han scratched the back of his head, “Eh… you kill your mother once and the stigma sticks with you for years.”

Muho looked at him, surprised because she somehow didn’t think that the path Han took involved patricide, “You killed your mother?”

“Yeah,” he said with a frown, “She was an abusive witch, she just never beat my big brother quite as hard.”

“Oh,” Muho said blandly, “Sorry.”

He shrugged, “Doesn’t matter to me anymore. Killed her, didn’t I?” he said with a grin.

“Did you kill your brother too?” she pressed.

“Yup,” he added cheerfully, “He kept sticking his nose into my business so I took it off. His nose, I mean. Along with the rest of his head.”

Kang pegged Han with a cold stare, “Business, please.”

Han bowed his head in apology, “Sorry boss.”

“As I was saying,” Kang resumed with a cough, “Glad to hear that you don’t have any loose ties that need to be dealt with, Muho. Let’s see… In general, you will have about one mission a month, though sometimes the requests I get are erratic. Sometimes I might ask you to act as my bodyguard as well. Most of your missions will be with a partner, likely Han, but I will send you out as part of a larger team or by yourself if necessary. Does that sound fair?”

“Yes, very much so,” Muho said with a bow of her head.

A small smile flitted onto Kang’s face, “Good. As I said, I like to run business smoothly. So. Do accept all the terms presented to you?”

She nodded, “Yes. I accept.”

“Wonderful!” Kang clapped his hands together and stood up, “Now, I want to see how you kill, remember?” he gestured to the tall man standing guard by the door, “Feng, bring him in.”

The man, Feng, stepped out of the room and walked out the hallway.

Within a few moments, he came back, dragging a man behind him.

The second man was thin, apparently starved. He was dirty and twitching, his eyes silently darting about with fear. Thick ropes bound and gagged him, keeping him from doing anything more than being dragged like a rag doll.

Feng threw the man at Muho’s feet and stepped back.

“There you go,” Kang said calmly, “Show me how you kill.”

Muho looked at the prisoner and for a moment wondered what he had done to have Kang keep him tied up in a back room somewhere. Then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to care. Not asking questions, had been part of the deal she had just accepted, after all.

She raised her open palm in front of the man and pulled up, whipping the air from his lungs.

Tremors worked their way through his lashing body as she held onto his breath. Because he was bound, he could do little more than struggle like a worm as she choked him.

A few more moments, and he went still.

Han broke the silence by letting out an appreciative whistle, “Damn,” he said, praising her, “That was _awesome_.”

“Impressive,” Kang added, in perhaps a more subtle manner than Han, but Muho got the impression that he was quite pleased by her little demonstration.

~*~

Muho got an apartment above the Zhu’s Poppy.

It was three times the size of her room at the Eastern Air Temple, easily. It had a small kitchen area, and a separate room for her to sleep in. She even had her own bathroom, complete with a long mirror that occupied the entire length of one of the bathroom walls. There were huge windows with shutters that she could close and open.

She had talked to Chen, who lived above the store like she did, and Chen pulled some sort of strings to get Eka a personal plot of land outside the city walls. Eka even had his own caretaker now, an elderly man who had been involved in the boss’s business when he had been younger. The caretaker brought Eka large bushels of hay and fruit every other day.

Muho had wanted to have a place for Eka inside the city, but apparently the boss didn’t want the fact that she was an Airbender to be common knowledge. Airbenders were rare to nonexistent in Ba Sing Se, and having a sky bison would draw attention to her. Also, and Muho had to admit that this made sense, on missions where Muho could travel on Eka, they didn’t want to have the bison land inside the city. Pets as large as Eka were apparently only common in the inner ring, and the boss wasn’t willing to invite Eka into his own home.

It did make sense, but she tried to get out of the city at least once a week to visit Eka in his little kingdom.

~*~

During the first week into her stay, Han dropped by her apartment to take her shopping.

Of course, Muho had little to no money, but Han persisted and ended up dragging her out into the streets, promising to pay for anything that she bought.

He bought her a futon and blanket for her bedroom, a fancy tea pot that seemed pointless to Muho, a set of dishes, an oil lamp and her own set of spark rocks to light it, and a small painted wooden statue of a dancing fire ferret that was the source of much argument between her and him.

“It’s so pretty,” he argued, placing it on her small table once back in the apartment.

Muho rolled her eyes, “It’s pointless.”

“It doesn’t _have_ to have a point,” Han exclaimed, “Geez were you raised by nuns or something?”

“Yes.”

“Right stupid question…”

~*~

Two days later, a message from the boss came into the shop through Chen.

It was a picture of a man, his name, where he lived, and when he needed to be dead by. Chen passed the thin papers over to Muho and Han, saying “Boss wants the both of you to go. Have a fun time you two!” she grinned at them and disappeared behind the counter.

“Is it always this concise?” Muho asked as she packed a small pouch with everything they would need.

“Yup,” Han replied, “Like the boss said, he doesn’t tell you anything you don’t need to know.”

~*~

Han made her take an eel-hound with him to the target, despite her protests to use Eka.

“When you’re not a newbie anymore,” he said, “Then we do what you want. Till then, you do what I say.”

~*~

They snuck into the target’s house in the middle of the night. Muho learned that large mansions were surprisingly easy to break into. Han had just unlatched a window to let them both in.

The target was sleeping in a plush bed, snoring without a care in the world.

Muho walked towards him, her hand raised, but Han stepped in front of her, shaking his head, “Newbie, remember? Watch and learn,” he whispered.

He settled into a solid stance and it seemed as though he was dragging his hand across the ground before Muho realized that he was Earthbending. A small selection of pebbles floated in front of his raised hand.

A flick of his fingers sent the pebbles hurtling into the target’s head with only the smallest of sounds.

It was a surprisingly forceful move, and soon red blood was pouring out of the man where he had been hit.

“Nice,” Muho breathed, exulted.

~*~

Life was easy to settle into.

During her days, Muho would talk with Chen in the store. To her surprise, they had actual customers come in to buy flowers. According to Chen, that was just another front for the boss. The more the store fronts looked like legitimate businesses, the less likely the army would stumble across the boss’s business. Chen was also easy to be around. The girl was sharp witted, but without any malice to her, and Muho wondered how she would be any good at work.

When she voiced this thought, Chen laughed and pulled out one of her knives. With a sharp downward throw, the blade had impaled itself three inches into the wooden wall, snagging a flower directly through the center along its way.

Han was also often company.

He went on many of the same missions that she did, although he did do some solo work on occasion. But the rest of the time, he would hang around in the Western half of the outer ring, particularly in Zhu’s Poppy.

Boredom was not something Han dealt with well, and he got into the habit of showing up at Muho’s room at random hours of the day and dragging her out into the city with him. Through these expeditions following Han, Muho learned the twists and turns of the outer ring, and within two months could navigate even the knurliest sections with ease.

These explorations with Han were random and unpredictable. Sometimes he would drag her to one of the city’s many gambling parlors, where odd assortments of people would sit around a low table and play cards for increasingly high pots of money. The gambling wasn’t limited to parlors though, and on many occasion Han would find a small group of homeless and other denizens of the nastier portions of the city to play with. In those games, the cards weren’t cards most of the time, and the stakes were every changing and confusing. Muho didn’t play then, she just watched Han rake in the money.

He had quite a talent for gambling and conning people out of their money. He never used his bending to cheat though, which was surprisingly honest for one like him.

There was never a dull moment with Han.

~*~

On one mission, the target being to eliminate a whole gang of over thirty people outside the city, Han decided that he needed to teach Muho how to fight with something other than her bending.

They were surrounded by the gang members after one had signaled an alarm before he was dead. Han was sending thin rock darts into people’s brains along with hue chunks of earth to throw off the opposition. Muho dodged and weaved through the enemies, ducking a strike while sending razor sharp blades of air to slice people to shreds. Strangulation sometimes just took too long.

She and Han worked well together in a fight.

Earthbending was naturally more grounded and stiff, but Han was a master of the art and knew how to weave stances and moves together like beads along a golden chain. Muho was a dancer, the circular moves of Airbending allowing her to flit across the battlefield, sharp and deadly but wicked fast. Han would cover his fist in stone to bash in a man’s head and in the next second turn the stone into piercing needles to send another opponent down. And on the other end of the fight, Muho would dance circles around her opposition, punctuating her strikes with sharp air to cut and wide strikes that sent her opponents flying into the way of Han’s boulders.

One of the guards threw a knife towards Muho while she was occupied with another man. It was only a quick and clever block with her staff that saved her from being impaled.

“You need to learn knife fighting!” Han yelled as he sent a guard to his knees with a sharp stone spike.

Muho shot towards her attacker and used her staff to sweep his feet out from under him. She took the knife that was still stuck in the wooden stick and plunged it through his head. “Is this really a good time for that!?” she called back as she ducked another attack.

~*~

Once they were back in Ba Sing Se and Muho and Han had cleaned their bloodied cloths, Han brought up the subject again.

“Come on Muho,” he said with a grin, producing a belt of thin throwing knives from the pocket of his vest, “It’s time you learned the way of the sword, my young pupil.”

~*~

True to his word, he made her spend hours in the shop throwing blades at the wall, supervised by Chen, who was far superior to both of them in this particular art.

These lessons mostly consisted of Han giving Muho a pack of knives and setting her loose on the wall while Chen laughed in the background because they were both so bad at it.

“Hush Chen,” Han said, tossing a blade into the wall five feet away from where it was supposed to land, “Or I’ll take a page out of Muho’s book and pin your hand to that table.”

Chen only laughed harder and then looked at Muho with amusement in her eyes, “You really pinned his hand to the table? When?”

Muho frowned, “When we first met. In my defense, all he had done was sit down and tell me that I was a murder and that he knew exactly how many people I had killed and where. He didn’t even introduce himself, that was it.”

Giggles began to fall out of Chen’s lips, “Han you _idiot_ ,” she said fondly.

~*~

“The knife wound I gave you…” Muho said quietly that night.

Han had decided that he was going to teach her how to cook and was staying late nights at her apartment, showing her ways to make simple food that wasn’t vegetarian. He paused what he was doing and looked at her, almost confused, “Eh, don’t worry about it. Chen was right, that was pretty stupid of me. Can’t help showing off sometimes, you know.”

Leaning against the kitchen counter, Muho asked, “Did it scar?”

“Hmm? Oh,” he lifted the injured hand up and held it out for her to see, “Not really. You missed all the important stuff.”

A thin line of scar tissue ran an inch long across his palm, between the bones of his ring and middle fingers. He was right, she hadn’t done major damage.

She ran her fingers over the line and muttered,

“I’m sorry…”

~*~

The six month mark passed, but Muho didn’t move to a different location. Instead she just began to pay Chen rent for her room above Zhu’s Poppy.

~*~

The boss gave Han and Muho an unexpected order. He was attending a party in the Earth King’s palace, but Feng, his usual guard was out on mission, and he needed to bring an entourage with him. The boss wasn’t expecting anything to happen, but as a matter of principle, he didn’t go to any social gathering without a guard.

Han was forced to wear a silken suit in dark greens that made him continuously complain about how difficult it was to store weapons in the pockets. Muho on the other hand, was forced into a smooth satiny dress that made her feel more like a doll than a person. The other irritation was finding a head covering that kept her tattoo’s hidden. The strip of black cloth she usually wore was too common and crass for a high end party.

The boss was perfectly comfortable with fancy parties, and kept the evening from being dull by constantly finding new people to talk to.

He seemed to live in a world where he knew everybody and everybody knew him. Like a fat spider, he sat in the center of a perfectly spun web, made from a system of favors and bribes and apparently sustained by the subtle threat that Kang could have everyone in this room killed on a moment’s notice.

Muho and Han kept the evening from being dull by whispering insults about the nobles to each other.

~*~

“Mission!” Han yelled enthusiastically as he slid open the door to her apartment, not even bothering to knock anymore.

Muho sat up from the table and looked at the thin scroll he held in his hands. “That looks more detailed than usual,” she commented.

“Yup,” he said, unrolling the paper and showing her, “Client wants an artifact retrieved. See?” he pointed to a picture of a small golden carving, “Worth barrels of coin, apparently. It’s a spiritual item, so he can’t just buy it. There’s supposed to be a guard of at least ten people, probably some benders in there as well. Likely at least one Air Nomad, as it’s traveling from the Western Air Temple. Definitely this guy,” he pointed to a sketch of an ugly looking man, “Earthbender, and used to be in the army.”

“Two benders for sure then,” Muho said with a frown, looking over the drawing of the route that this guard was going to take, “And eight that we don’t know.”

Han shrugged, “Could be a non-bending Air Nomad.”

She gave him a look, “All Air Nomads are benders.”

“Oh,” he said, “Well then yes, you’re right. Anyways, we should pin them there,” he pointed to a spot on the map, “They’ll be on the edge of a cliff face, we can hide out on the top of the rocks and jump down to attack them. Take ‘em by surprise.”

~*~

The two took eel-hounds again, because if there was an Air Nomad in the group, they didn’t want their arrival ruined by Eka’s appearance. They left their mounts tied up at a village a day’s walk away and camped out on top of the cliff face where the caravan would be passing under.

It was a sheer cliff face, at least twenty meters up from the path, which was wide and sturdy. Below the path was a dense forest.

“Carefully of the woods,” Han told her as they scooped out the area, “If someone grabs the goods and jumps into the trees, it’ll be hard to find them again.”

Muho mulled this over, “Just bring up a barrier with your bending if it looks like someone is going to do that. At the very least, it’ll take their bender a few moments to lower the barrier and we can intercept him.”

“Good plan,” he commented, “Now, when we attack, don’t target anyone specifically, just try and kill the ones that look like they are weak first. If we thin their numbers first, then it’s less likely that one will sneak off with the statue. After we’ve quickly taken care of the weaklings, then we’ll kill the benders.”

~*~

The hot sun beat down in their backs as Muho and Han laid flat on the rock, their ears pressed to the ground to hear the caravan coming. After what felt like hours of tedious waiting, a rumble of wheels and feet hitting stone reached their ears and Muho and Han leapt up. They both knelt at the top of the cliff, knees bent and bodies pressed close to the ground so the caravan wouldn’t see them coming, but they were both ready to spring into action as soon as the group was at the perfect position.

“Eight people,” Han whispered to her as the rumblings grew closer, “Get ready.”

Muho nodded, “I’m always ready.”

When the caravan was directly below them, Han gave her the signal and they both threw themselves over the edge of the cliff.

There was a scream from the caravan.

Muho and Han landed right in front of the cart, driven by a thin man on an ostrich-horse. The guards were confused, scattered by their sudden appearance and the two used this to their advantage.

With two sharp movements of her fist’s Muho began to squeeze the breath out of the two men nearest to her. Guarding her back, Han brought up a rock wall to catch the arrows that had been fired at them.

With a second motion of his fist, he splintered the wall and sent the shards flying into the archer’s body.

Dropping the two now dead bodies, Muho and Han split up. She propelled herself through the air, pulling her staff off from the rope that secured it to her back. She caught the man driving the cart as he tried to unhitch the skittish and panicking ostrich-horse, landing a strong blow to his back to knock him down and then kicking a sharp barrage of wind at him. His blood splattered across the sunbaked ground rom the damage the sharp pressurized air had caused him.

She quickly moved around the cart to secure the back, Han on the other side of the cart to cover more space.

There were only two people on this side, and a quick head count and the sudden scream that came from Han’s fight told her that there were only three left, the two likely benders among the living.

Behind her, she could hear the thuds and creaks of the earth. Sounded as though Han had found the Earthbender and the two were dueling. Of course, she couldn’t let him beat her, now could she?

With a desperate war cry, the guard nearest to her ran at her, sword raised high.

Almost elegantly, she spun around him and sent a strong blow to his exposed back with her staff. He was sent careening into the cart with a crash and lay there. Not giving him any time to recover, she threw a brace of knives into his neck and head.

“Now, there was one more…” she muttered to herself as she turned to look for the final person. Why they hadn’t fought till now was a mystery to her, but hey, she was not complaining for an easy fight.

Instead, she went still.

“…Mu…ho?” the shocked voice asked her, and she wasn’t sure if this was real. Of all the people they Air Nomads could have sent, why on earth would they have sent Penden?

Muho adjusted the grip on her staff and strode towards her former… not friend really. Ally, perhaps. Acquaintance.

“Hello Penden,” she said calmly, taking in the person before her. Penden had lost her chubby cheeks, but was still rounder than Muho was. Her dark hair was tied back in an echo of her former childish pigtails, and she still wore bright saffron robes. There was age on her face, of course, being two years older than Muho as she was. Penden had not aged well. Muho didn’t look much older than when she had left the temple, but Penden could have aged ten extra years in that time.

Penden let her staff fall – there were tattoo’s on her face as well, so she must have become a master at some point. The wood clattered to the ground. “No…” the elder woman muttered, “No, they said that you had left… Why are you here? Why are you…?” she sent a fearful look towards the guard Muho had just dispatched, “…killing people?”

Muho continued to walk towards Penden in long casual strides, “Didn’t they tell you? The technique I created, it was a murder technique. The elders banned it, so I left as well. Did they never mention my creation to you?”

Hastily shaking her head, she replied, “No… they…” she stepped backwards, afraid of Muho almost, “They said it was… an abomination. They said… no one was supposed to follow your example… ever…”

“Shame,” Muho commented, her voice cool and peaceful, although she was bitter at this news, “I almost want to kill them for that comment. You asked me to show you, all those years ago. Do you want me to show you now?”

Penden didn’t even have time to answer before Muho snatched the breath from her body.

As a fellow Airbender, particularly as someone who supposedly mastered the art, Penden should have been able to negate Muho’s technique. By simply taking command of the energy around her, indeed, the wind energy inside her own body, she could counter the suffocation technique. But either Penden couldn’t figure it out or was too surprised to.

Either way, Penden flailed around on the ground for a few minutes before going still.

There was silence.

Han walked around to the other side of the cart, clutching at his bloodied shoulder, “Man, that ex-soldier was a _nasty_ fucker. Sliced my shoulder open before I could kill him. How did your side of the fighting go? Anyone worth a challenge, or were they all a bunch of wimps?” he looked at the dead body of Penden and then back at Muho, “That’s an Air Nomad, right? Did you… know her?”

Muho nodded, “Yes. She was once…” But Muho again didn’t have the word for whatever Penden had been to her. Instead, she finished, “Did you get the treasure?”

“Yup,” Han said with his customary grin, pulling something golden out of his pocket with his good arm, “Swiped it out of the cart when I finished with the ex-soldier.”

“Then let’s go,” she said coldly, “I don’t want to dawdle here.”

~*~

“Any complications?” Kang asked, examining the statue with a critical eye.

Han glanced at Muho, hesitantly, but not for fear of worrying the boss. For fear of hurting Muho somehow.

“I killed someone I knew,” Muho informed him, “Someone from the Air Temple I used to live in.”

Kang’s eyes flickered up to meet hers, “Do you except that you will receive any trouble from this encounter?”

“I… I don’t know,” she replied, trying to think over what the reaction to Penden’s death would be like, “Air Nomads are small in number. They stick together, they look after their own, but most are not the vengeful type. I can’t really see any of them going after me themselves, but the council is unlikely to let the murder of one of their members go. If they figure out that I killed her, it’s more likely that they’ll put a bounty on my head and let the army do their work for them.”

Kang sighed, “You killed her on my orders… I can’t really fault you for that, I suppose. But I hope, for your sake, that you manage to keep one step ahead of the army. Remember, if you get caught, I won’t bail you out.”

“I know,” Muho reassured him, “But I will not let myself be caught.”

~*~

Two months later, Han presented her with a wanted poster that he had brought back from a mission in the Southern Mountain range.

It had her face on it, along with her age and the fact that she was considered highly dangerous. The bounty on her head was over five hundred gold pieces.

~*~

The new bounty on her head had given her a new moniker, it seemed.

On her next solo mission, when Muho brought down the gates of the small fortress to kill everyone inside, the guard who recognized her began screaming his head off that ‘Red Death Muho’ was going to kill them all.

It was bad for business, apparently, and she had to be careful to keep her appearance disguised when she left Zhu’s Poppy now, but she had to admit that she liked the name.

It was… florid, but intimidating.

~*~

“You suck at not being noticed,” Han commented one night, walking with her back from a card game at one of the outer ring’s shabbiest gambling parlors. “Seriously? Red Death Muho? God though, I kinda wish I had that sort of fame. It’s bad for business, mind, but damn what an ego boost that must be for you.”

Muho rolled her eyes, “Don’t worry Han. You don’t need any more ego boosts.”

He stuck his tongue out at her, “Hush, miss Red Death Muho.”

“Han the Talkative.”

“What?! No, that’s not fair!”

“Han the Constantly Bored.”

“Okay, that one’s just stupid!”

“Han the Masochistic?”

“That is just plain un-true! Since when have I ever been a masochist?”

“Since yesterday, when you asked me to stab you through your hand again to see if it would hurt the second time around.”

“… Point.”

~*~

“You have a new mission,” Kang informed her over a cup of tea, “Solo assassination,” he slid a sketch of a man’s face over the table, “Here’s your target.”

Muho frowned and looked over the image, “What’s different about this? You never talk to me in person, you always send a messenger to Chen instead.”

With a click, Kang placed his cup down on the table. He leaned back into his plush chair and sighed, “I said I would never tell you about clients, and that is still true. Consider this man the exception. That is Le Huan. He also has no shady past, no enemies, no sizable fortune, and no living family. In other words, no one who would want him dead, and no one who would pay to have him killed. Now, the client that requested his kill didn’t come through all the proper channels. They also specifically asked for you, Red Death Muho. Do you know why I am telling you this?”

She shook her head, and Kang continued, “In all my years working this business, only once have I ever had a client request a specific agent of mine to be assigned to a case. Can you guess who it was? It was Han’s older brother. He tried to lure Han out into the open by requesting a false mission.”

“You think that whoever requested this…” Muho began.

“Wants you dead, yes,” Kang finished. “You shouldn’t have gained a reputation.”

Muho sighed and stared at the sketch of Le Huan, “So you think it is a trap?”

“My dear,” Kang said, giving her an almost kind stare, “If I did not, would I have warned you?”

~*~

Han watched her pack.

Over the years of working the job, Muho had learned what to take with her and what not to. If she would be gone for three days or less, as the case was on this particular trip, she wouldn’t take any food besides a few strips of dried meats. She rather liked meat, she thought. It was better than being vegetarian all the time.

On top of her dark clothing, she tied her belts of knives to her waist and calves. Laced up her boots. Tugged on her fingerless gloves. She left her dark headband on the table. Whoever was waiting for her knew that she was an Airbender already and it would do nothing to cover up her tattoos.

“Be careful,” Han warned.

She didn’t even look up from her work, slinging her staff across her back and tying it to her body with a leather strap, “I always am. Why? Are you worried about me?”

He laughed, but it was laced with bitterness, “I always am. Normally, I would beg to go with you… but this is something you need to deal with on your own. Whoever is waiting for you, they are after you. Me being there would sully your kill.”

“Thanks,” Muho said after a moment, tying her green cloak across her shoulders and throwing up the hood to cast her face in shadows, “I don’t know who they sent, but… odds are they will be from the Eastern Air Temple. Where I was raised. I’ll likely know them, and they’ll likely know me, or at least have heard of me.”

Han sighed and leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, trying to give the illusion that he wasn’t honestly bothered by this, “I hope they don’t want to kill you with the same passion my brother had when he tried to kill me.”

“Air Nomads don’t have passion for killing,” Muho said confidently.

“You do,” he pointed out quietly.

“I am unlike the rest, that’s why I left. If there are any other Airbenders like me, you won’t find them in a temple,” she grabbed her bag and tied the strings shut, “Airbenders are taught from the moment they are born to never kill or harm others. I was born the way I was. There’s a difference. Whoever I face won’t kill me because at their core, they will consider that to be wrong. When I fight them, their goal will not be my death, but my capture or defeat. And that’s why I always win. Because I am not afraid to strike a killing blow.”

Han’s grin slipped onto his face, “Ah yes, when all else fails, just unleash your bloodlust on your opponent.”

She snorted indignantly, “I like to think that I remain calm and collected in a fight.”

“Uh…” he raised an eyebrow, challenging her, “There’s a _reason_ people call you Red Death Muho. When you’re not strangling people, you get a bit… uh… _bloody_.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Muho replied as she walked past him to the door.

“Muho,” Han said, letting the name tumble from his lips before he could stop himself, “Good luck.”

She glanced back over her shoulder as she walked out the door, “I don’t need luck.”

~*~

The location provided turned out to be nothing more than a small sack in the middle of a forest.

Muho circled the area on Eka before landing in the middle of the clearing. Whoever was waiting for her was expecting her to be an Airbender and why disappoint by not arriving by sky bison? Besides, Eka wasn’t useless in a fight and his tail could create gusts of wind. There was a reason that the Airbenders learned bending from the sky bison.

She leapt off Eka’s head and untied the drawstrings of her cloak, throwing the fabric to the side and pulling her staff out from behind her back. She gripped it like a mace, ready to strike out at whoever came after her.

“I heard you were looking for me?” she called out, her voice ringing around the silent clearing.

The door of the shack opened, the creaks loud and grinding. A figure wearing a hooded dirty orange cloak stepped out from inside the dark hut, a staff just like Muho’s in their hand. The figure strode confidently towards Muho and then stopped, a good thirty paces away.

Muho’s eyes narrowed, and she slid her feet into the beginnings of a stance, “Did the Eastern Air Temple send you? If it helps, killing Penden was not personal. It was just for a job. No hard feelings.”

The figure paused, and then looked to the edges of the clearing and ordered, “Secure the bison.”

Without a second’s warning, twenty men jumped from the trees, huge thick ropes sailing across the sky to cover Eka like a blanket.

“No!” Muho snarled, swinging her staff and slicing three of the ropes into shreds, but it wasn’t enough, more and more ropes replaced the destroyed ones in a moment.

She turned her staff and her attentions to the men, but before she could slash more than one of them to pieces, a powerful gust of wind encircled her, cutting her off from Eka and his struggle. Muho slowly turned around to face the Airbender, her staff held at the ready and hot anger filling her in a way that it hadn’t before.

“Don’t worry,” the figure said in a far too familiar voice, “Your bison won’t be killed. I am not cruel.” The figure grabbed the orange cloak and threw it off their shoulders.

Muho’s eyes narrowed into venomous slits. “Je-Tsun,” she hissed, “They sent _you_ to deal with me?”

Je-Tsun, her old teacher, the person that Muho had once held respect for, nodded her head, “Yes. There was a large council, between all four of the council’s from each temple. It is not often that an Airbender goes down such a wrong path. You have caused quite a stir after your murder of Penden. The council decided that I was best suited to go after you. After all, I was your teacher. I know how you fight, your patterns, and your tricks.”

“It has been many years since then, _sifu_ ,” Muho replied, setting a pace around the clearing, her back still to Eka, but prowling in a circle like a predator facing prey, “I have many new tricks, but you? You must be in your late forties by now.”

A sigh came from Je-Tsun, as though she was still the teacher and Muho still the student, “You know too well that bending only grows more potent with age.”

“Prove it then,” Muho said, her voice positively dripping with anticipation. She _wanted_ this. She wanted to kill Je-Tsun more than she had wanted to kill anyone.

There was silence as the two faced off, staring the other in the eye, daring the other to make the first move.

Muho was no fool. She knew that her teacher was a powerful Airbender, she knew that Je-Tsun had achieved mastery at a young age, perhaps the same age or even younger than Muho. She also knew that if she didn’t kill Je-Tsun, her teacher would lock her up and deliver her to the Earth Kingdom Army. Kang’s warning about throwing her to the dogs if she failed rang in her ears. It didn’t matter though. She would not let herself be defeated.

A pained roar from Eka sent Muho springing into action.

With the talent of an Airbending prodigy, she leapt into the air and twirled her staff around her contorting body, sending blast after blast of wind at Je-Tsun.

Her once and former teacher flipped almost horizontally through the air to avoid the blasts, and then crouched low to the ground, sweeping her leg across the dirt and sending a wide wave of wind into the fight. The wave towered over Muho as the young woman touched back to earth.

Before the wave could hit her, Muho slammed her staff on the ground, cutting through the attack so that it blew past her harmlessly.

“Come on Je-Tsun!” Muho yelled breathlessly, “You’ll have to do better than that to beat me!”

Another blast of wind from her teacher quickly put Muho on the defensive.

For another moment, the two both struck out in the same manner, sending identically circular blasts towards each other. With the force of an explosion, the two attacks met exactly equidistant between the two and canceled each other out. Huge gusts of wind threatened to blow both fighters back, and Muho threw her hands up to cover her face, lowering her stance so that she was closer to the ground. The wind rushed over her body, blowing strands of hair out of her carefully tied ponytail.

When the winds died down, both Je-Tsun and Muho simply stared at each other.

Muho was crouched down low in a predatory like stance, her staff held behind her, coiled and ready to pounce. Je-Tsun was down on one knee, her arms and her staff crossed in front of her face, and her flowing brightly colored robes torn from the powerful winds.

This would be more difficult than Muho liked to admit.

It was one thing to know that her teacher was powerful, it was another to see it in action. Mastery didn’t come easily, and the tattoos were won with talent and hard work. Muho herself was proof of this. If she wanted to beat her former teacher, she would have to rely on more than her natural talent.

If she stuck to moves that she had learned at the Eastern Air Temple, she would never hope to defeat Je-Tsun. That last blow had proved that. When sticking with moves they both had been taught, they would simply cancel each other out. As much as she was loath to admit it, Muho and Je-Tsun were quite similar people when it came down to it. They both had strong desires motivating them. Je-Tsun seemed to want peace, a continuation of Air Nomads morals, and on some level- vengeance for Penden. Muho was different. She was motivated by anger and red hot desire for the kill. Bloodlust, just like Han had said.

When it came down to it though, Muho had a feeling that they weren’t evenly matched. Je-Tsun had lived her life in the Air Temples, surrounded by Airbenders, and people who fought with the same techniques and styles. Their fight so far had proven this, revealed Je-Tsun’s typical Airbender moves, evading attacks and sending sweeping strikes that were designed to knock back instead of utilizing the fact that air could slice flesh to ribbons when pushed.

On the other hand, Muho had _not_ spent her life in the temples.

She had traveled through the Earth Kingdom. Fought and killed swordsmen, archers, martial artists, Earthbenders, Waterbenders, Firebenders, and even an Airbender. Her moves were based on knife throwing from lessons with Chen and watching Feng occasionally punch the lights out of someone. Fighting side by side with Han for years, the most powerful Earthbender she had ever met. He was a master of the art, and he had naturally what Muho needed for this fight. Creativity. Han seemed to absorb his enemy’s movements and regurgitate them into his own style, creating moves that seemed to be anything but based in Earthbending.

Muho was well traveled and well learned, and that stacked the cards ever so slightly in her favor.

The first move went to her again.

Curving her body like a wild animal, she released an arc of wind that forced Je-Tsun to leap into the air.

Taking a page out of Han’s book, she moved her arm in a left hook, sending five sharp darts of air like needles from her fingertips.

Her teacher gasped, eyes wide as she literally bent over backwards in midair to avoid the pinpoint strikes. Four missed, but the fifth ripped a hole through her left shoulder.

With a pained cry, Je-Tsun landed inelegantly, her arm dripping blood from the wound. She raised her staff, sending a wide whirl of air towards Muho.

Muho gripped her staff and turned, preparing to deflect the move and retaliate.

Je-Tsun misinterpreted the move.

Her teacher’s eyes darted from Muho to Eka and then back to the guards who had imprisoned the bison, “Don’t let her escape!” she yelled, the order ringing through Muho’s ears, “Kill the bison before she can run!”

This time, Muho did run, darting towards Eka, propelling herself forward with her bending. But she was too far away, she had gotten too close to Je-Tsun, too far away from Eka.

In slow motion, and some part of Muho found irony in this, because Muho had always loved to be fast and had prized swiftness, Muho watched as the nearest guard lifted his spear.

The spear swung downwards.

Eka roared, straining his body against the ropes.

With her free hand, Muho reached out towards her bison, her loyal companion throughout the years, already pushing herself beyond her limits, but knowing that she wouldn’t get there in time.

The spear hit flesh, and Eka let out a dying groan as red blood stained the earth.

Muho slid to the ground, cradling Eka’s head in her arms. Blood poured from his mouth and his eyes went dead. She had seen this happen a thousand times in animals, had caused this a thousand time before. But never had the thought passed through her mind to do this to Eka. Eka was her loyal companion, her… perhaps friend was the right word here.

In a flash, she snatched the breath from the two men closest to her and let them struggle and writhe before letting their dead bodies fall.

The guards panicked and scrambled backwards, but Muho wasn’t going to let them go.

She wasn’t going to let anyone go.

Everyone here was going to die now.

 _Bloody_.

Her gaze still locked on Eka’s dead body, she stood, a wind kicking up and blowing around the clearing. The wind grew stronger and higher and created a barrier, throwing any of the men who tried to escape back into the clearing. They weren’t going anywhere.

She turned and walked back towards Je-Tsun. Her staff lay where it fell. She didn’t need it anymore.

Je-Tsun had scrambled to her feet, her hand no longer clutched to her bloodied shoulder, nursing her wound like a babe who had never tasted the bite of combat. Her teacher didn’t look afraid, but the fear was there, creeping at the edges of her mind, licking the harsh winds like tongues of flame waiting to devour what lay in its path.

Muho, still walking steadily towards her teacher, raised her fist and grabbed the breath from Je-Tsun’s lungs.

For a moment, her teacher gasped and sputtered and clutched at her throat, but then Muho let her fall.

Strangulation was too quick. Too painless. Not bloody enough for Muho, because Muho would have her blood.

With a smooth arm movement, Muho sent a spinning tornado towards her teacher.

The spinning winds pushed Je-Tsun up against the walls of the shack before her teacher dissipated the winds. Je-Tsun’s staff lay discarded near her feet, having fallen from the numb fingers of her injured arm. Her teacher’s eyes darted towards the fallen stick and Muho could sense the beginnings of a gust designed to bring the staff back to Je-Tsun’s grip.

She plucked a knife from her belt and flicked it towards her teacher, sending a gust of air a second later to increase the speed of the blade.

The metal sliced through Je-Tsun’s hand and pinned it to the wooden wall of the shack, letting the partially retrieved staff clatter back to the ground.

Another blade thrown a second later had Je-Tsun’s damaged hand stuck to the wall as well.

The whirlwind around the clearing was still going strong, blowing Muho’s clothes and hair around her body, almost dragging Je-Tsun towards her wayward student. The wind bit at Muho’s eyes, but she didn’t blink. She stared at Je-Tsun with a cold smoldering gaze.

Bitter hate clawed at her insides, threatening to rip her to shreds. Rage, poisonous fury welled up within her and for a moment death seemed too good for her teacher.

“You thought you could challenge me?” she stated, her voice echoing and strong like a false god, “You thought that you were a better Airbender than I?”

The fear was there now, rising in Je-Tsun’s fearful eyes, and Muho _loved_ it. She was utterly in control. Nothing felt better than watching her teacher fear her, watching the tables turn, watching her vengeance rage its course.

“I am better than you,” Muho continued, “I am the greatest Airbending master there has ever been. I am drenched in blood, and you thought you could beat me? I am Red Death Muho,” she declared,

“And you thought you could kill my Eka?”

~*~

Je-Tsun’s death was not quick.

Muho had been determined to draw it out, to bring to the surface every scream, every wretched and weak noise that was in her former teacher. To spill so much blood that she would never get it to wash out.

The guards had died slightly quicker. Muho didn’t know them. The one that had brought the spear to Eka’s head met a particularly unpleasant end.

At the end of it all, when all the bodies laid in front of her, she felt slightly less hollow. The urge in her, the bloodlust felt stated, not gone, never gone, but pleased.

Muho had been skilled in the disposal of the corpses.

She wanted to send a message to the Air Nomads, something they would never forget.

When it was done, she cut Je-Tsun limb from limb and spread the pieces out in the clearing, like assembling a stone mural. In the center, she placed Je-Tsun’s head, unscarred and undamaged, recognizable.

With her teacher’s spilled blood, she wrote the message;

‘Come and get me’

~*~

 


End file.
